Health Inequalities
Health Inequalities
Health inequalities are avoidable, unfair, and systematic differences in health between different groups of people. There are many kinds of health inequality, and many ways in which the term is used. This means that when we talk about ‘health inequality’, it is useful to be clear on which measure is unequally distributed, and between which people.
Health inequalities ultimately relate to differences in the status of people’s health, but the term is also used to refer to differences in the care that people receive and the opportunities they have to lead healthy lives – both of which can contribute to their health status. Health inequalities can therefore involve differences in:
- health status (for example: life expectancy)
- knowledge and awareness of unhealthy behaviours, available care and treatment
- access to care (for example: availability of given services)
- quality and experience of care (for example: levels of patient satisfaction)
- behavioural risks to health (for example: smoking rates)
- wider determinants of health (for example: quality of housing).
The King’s Fund have created a webpage to help people understand what health inequalities are:
What are health inequalities? (The King’s Fund)
Addressing and reducing Health inequalities is a key priority for Surrey County Council, the Surrey Borough and District Councils, Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System, and our associated public and voluntary sector partner organisations and community groups, and the Surrey Health and Wellbeing Strategy is a good starting point for information on the coordinated activities that are underway to achieve this aim.
There is therefore an increasing appetite for data and information resources that help describe the range and scale of health inequalities in the county, and some key links to useful health inequalities datasets, reports and resources are given below:
Local Authority Health Profiles: Fingertips Public Health Data (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities)
| Surrey | View data | View reports |
| Elmbridge Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Epsom and Ewell Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Guildford Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Mole Valley District Council | View data | View reports |
| Reigate and Banstead Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Runnymede Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Spelthorne Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Surrey Heath Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Tandridge District Council | View data | View reports |
| Waverley Borough Council | View data | View reports |
| Woking Borough Council | View data | View reports |
**These resources will be kept under review and this page further revised as necessary**
| Resource | Access link | Purpose | Areas covered |
| Surrey Index – Surrey-i | Publicly available | Highlights areas of Surrey that perform well or poorly against various outcomes. | LCN, PCN, Ward |
| JSNA: Surrey Context (Intro and demographics chapter) | Publicly available | High level overview of Surrey’s population and demographics | Range: lowest possible geography available |
| Fingertips Public Health Data – Wider determinants of Health | Publicly available | Provides intelligence regarding the wider determinants of health | |
| National Health Inequalities Improvement Dashboard (HIID) | Requires registration to access | Focus on the 5 urgent actions and CORE20 PLUS 5 | Integrated Care Partnership / Sustainability & Transformation Partnerships (ICS/STP), NHS Regions |
| Wider Impacts of COVID-19 on Health (WICH) | Publicly available | Interactive web tool on wider impacts of COVID | WICH comprises both a National monitoring tool and a local Fingertips profile. |
| COVID-19 Health Inequalities Monitoring in England Tool (CHIME) | Publicly available | To bring together data relating to the impacts of COVID-19 on inequalities | England and English regions |
| PHE Health Inequalities Dashboard | Publicly available | Display trends in health inequalities in England | England, regions, local authorities (inequality data at region, local authority and Clinical Commissioning Groups level for some indicators) |
| PHE Segment Tool | Publicly available | Present causes of death and age groups driving life expectancy gap. | England, regions, local authorities, NHS regions, Clinical Commissioning Groups and Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships |
| Global Burden of Disease | Publicly available | ||
| Surrey Health and Wellbeing Strategy dashboard | Publicly available | Provides the data on selected HWB metrics | data down to ward level – availability depends on the indicators |
| Atlas of variation | Publicly available | Helps to identify variation and assess the value that healthcare provides to both populations and individuals. |